The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
ISBN:9781591841838 read summary

For the most part, this book is interesting. It deals with decentralization and how decentralized organizations have certain advantages over more centralized organizations. Hence, the titular metaphor; decentralized organizations are like a starfish, which, unlike a spider, cannot be killed by cutting off the head.

While interesting, I have two major qualms with the book. First is the title. The use of the word "leaderless" in the subtitle is a marketing ploy. After all, leadership and leaders are thought to be essential to organizations. So, a book claiming to show how organizations without leaders can be powerful is bound to inspire curiosity. However, upon reading the book you will find that while true leaderless organizations are difficult to destroy, they are also not capable of achieving unified objectives. In fact, the authors spend much of their time talking about organizations which are decentralized and run by leaders who use a hands off leadership style, "power down", and encourage initiative in subordinates. Of course, the authors rename the leaders as "catalysts" and "champions", but if you have studied leadership theory you will see that catalysts and champions are leaders by another name.

The second qualm I have is the narrowness of the experiences presented. If you read the book and wait until the end to read about the authors, you will have no trouble figuring out where they went to school and the circles they are connected to. Like other authors in the genre (notably Malcolm Gladwell), they use anecdotes to drive their thesis home. However, their anecdotes are taken, for the most part, from a very narrow band of experiences within the authors' social and academic circles. The book espouses the power of connections, but the authors don't seem to be heeding their own advice as their networks of connections seems somewhat narrow. This raises questions about whether the principles outlined in the book can be effectively generalized to the much, much broader world outside that of the authors'.

In all, I hesitate to recommend this book. If you are interested in how increased decentralization can enhance organizational effectiveness there are certainly some lessons to be learned here. However, if you are looking for a world-shaking vision of powerful leaderless organizations, you'll be disappointed.

Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom: The Starfish and the Spider

My name is David Marquet, from Practicum, Inc and we help our customers achieve organizational success by getting each person to act as a leader.
Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom's book, The Starfish and the Spider, is a compelling description of the strengths and weaknesses of decentralized (the starfish) and centralized (the spider) organizations. Many of the examples of decentralized organizations are recent, such as Craigslist, Napster, Wikipedia, and Skype. They also contrast the decentralized Apaches against the centralized Spanish Army, illustrating that decentralized organizations are not new.

The authors explain that we are in the midst of a revolution where the absence of the traditional leadership model results in organizations without hierarchy. Through their examples, they demonstrate that while you'd think chaos and disorder would be the result, these groups can be tremendously effective.

The authors find biological evidence that supports this result. MIT scientist Jerry Lettvin conducted an experiment which attempted to locate the unique brain cell that housed a specific memory. He couldn't find it. Turns out, the brain itself is a decentralized organ. This means that there is no one cell that houses the memory of grandmother. That would be a fragile architecture as injury to that cell would wipe her out of our memory. Instead, the memory of grandmother lives in a rich pattern of cells. This is a more resilient architecture.
We like their thesis and telling of the story. It is consistent with our findings. We frequently get asked, if the leader does not lead the people, who does? Our answer is that people lead themselves.

In only one area would I describe these decentralized organizations differently than Brafman and Beckstrom and this is a quibble. They claim these are organizations without leaders. We describe these as organizations where everyone is a leader. In any event, they are organizations where there are no followers!

You can sum up this entire book pretty quickly. Spiders and starfish look alike but spiders have a head and starfish are led by independent legs. With this analysis you can now examine every company to see if it is led by a head or if the individual legs, the workers, are driving the company. That is the only interesting information in the whole book and you get this pretty early.
The rest of the chapters are just endlessly repetitive chapters about how mostly liberal groups with no leaders are accomplishing big things because everyone can influence the group. Those groups are not businesses who need to make a profit to survive and I found the comparisons to be lacking to any reality because there were no actionable items anywhere in the book.
This book is just the latest soup of the day that will give you some buzz words to talk about until the next one comes along.

This is a book for anyone with even a passing interest in organisational design, command and control, business strategy, the internet, community organisations, or for that matter anything to do with being involved in a group and/or organisation. The book's easy-to-read style and use of practical examples to illustrate the authors' key points make it accessible to the wide cross-section of the community that would benefit from the insights it provides.

However, there are a few issues that I found with the book.

(1) There is a fair bit of repetition throughout the book. While this does reinforce the points made, it really is not necessary due to the authors' ability to clearly explain the points in the first instance. This is a minor point and can be easily overlooked.

(2) My major concern was that the book left a few issues unresolved. Although the book's core argument is that decentralised organisations can be dynamic, responsive and difficult to destroy; the authors also highlight the need to ensure the right mix of centralisation and decentralisation, the 'sweet spot' as they call it. Unfortunately, the authors did not really address the vulnerabilities of these hybrid organisations like they did for the purely centralised or decentralised ones. Had they included this, the book would have been complete. But as it stands, there is just that something lacking. Hence the absence of the fifth star.

These points are minor and I have no hesitation recommending this book to friends and colleagues. The insights it provides are unique and, unlike much of the organisational design literature out there, the style of writing and simplicity of argument make it accessible to everyone.

Of note, it was this book's discussion on the Amazon community that inspired to write reviews for Amazon....

From a leadership perspective from within a "hybrid starfish" type of organization, this book hits the nail on the head. I recommend this book to all other leaders within my professional organization; it provides a good roadmap on how to develop a successful business culture in a non-traditional organizational configuration. The big challenge is getting other folks to realize what they are dealing with in the first place.